Chapter Three: Slavery

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“O’Connell! Move it!” The guard yelled at him angrily. Rick moved slowly, his feet shuffling, the heavy chains making it difficult to move at any reasonable pace.

Rick looked behind him at the long row of slaves, all sweating and miserable under the hot Egyptian sun. Many were not Egyptian, but came from all over the world, people who dared oppose Imhotep and question his power. People who opposed him were crushed, their families forced into slavery.

Imhotep’s rule of the world had truly changed it. No land was untouched, no people not disrupted and forced into submission. Imhotep could destroy an entire continent with his power over the winds and the waves. Millions had already died. Millions were in slavery. One by one, the lights of freedom and hope were extinguished, all over the globe.

Among the slaves here in Egypt there were a few Med Jai, here and there, noticeable for their dark tattoos. The other slaves stayed away from them, but the Med Jai knew Rick, and they were uneasy allies. Rick was the soul brother of Ardeth, their unconditional leader. In ordinary times they would be friends, would die for each other. But in this new world everything had changed.

The Med Jai had failed in their task to control the creature, and with Imhotep free, their lives were full of nothing but shame and anger. Like Rick, they would sacrifice their lives to kill Imhotep. But they would do so for entirely different reasons. For the Med Jai it was honor. For Rick, it was love. His life was wrapped up in two people who he could not live without, and who were under Imhotep’s direct control.

Every day without them was torture.

But Rick knew that, when or if the time came, he could count on these scattered and disillusioned Med Jai to help him fight the Creature.

Rick did not even know if any Med Jai had survived uncaptured, or if Ardeth still lived. Ardeth. A flicker of a smile passed over Rick’s face as he remembered his old friend.

They had been through a lot together, had trusted each other on blind faith in their toughest moments. They were indeed brothers, Med-Jai, men whose souls were interconnected. Rick did not know what role he had played in their past lives, or on what side they had fought. But he knew, with every instinct he had, that their souls had known each other for eons, their relationship stronger than blood.

Rick remembered how Ardeth had sacrificed in the jungles of Ahm Shere to help him and Evy find Alex, when Imhotep had awakened the second time. He remembered how Ardeth had risked his life in the tunnel at Hamanuptra the first time they had met, battling the mummies so that Rick and Evy could escape. That was even before they were married, before Alex was born. How long ago that all seemed.

A mummy stopped in front of Rick, who was standing still, lost in thought. “You’re moving particularly quickly today, O’Connell. I’d watch the daydreaming if I were you,” he said, his black mummified teeth glinting in the sun. With one, quick, fluid motion, he backhanded Rick, smacking him across his cheek and jaw. He fell, half sprawled on the ground, holding his face. The mummy laughed as Rick’s fall pulled the slave behind him down too, the chains linking them to each other in life and death.

Slowly picking himself up, Rick glared at the retreating form of the guard.

One of Imhotep’s pleasures was that his old friends, the mummies he raised from the dead, were his slave masters. It was also one of his methods into scaring people into submission. Many brave people did not fear a gun, or a noble death, but they feared a moving, talking, living mummy with superhuman strength.

He hadn’t been afraid of mummies with superhuman strength, not when he had his weapons. Not when he had his dignity and his family. Evy and Alex. Alex and Evy. His wife and his son. His life.

Alex and Evy had been ripped from him. Each day he lived in terror that Imhotep would exact his ultimate revenge, and he would learn of, or see, his family’s death.

It was not fear of losing his own life that drove him onward. He was afraid, afraid every second of every day, that the ones he loved were in danger or alone or afraid where he could not help them. He knew not where Alex and Evy were, or if they were in pain, or if they were hurt.

He knew nothing. Ignorance was the greatest torture Imhotep could ever have inflicted.

Rick did know, however, that a time might come, however far in the future, when Alex and Evy would need him. And he would never, ever let them down.

He did the work mindlessly, the burning sun rising higher in the sky. Rick suddenly became aware of one of the mummies standing over him. “You’re weak, O’Connell,” the mummy taunted, watching Rick and two other slaves struggle with a huge stone. Rick had no shirt on, and sweat glistened on his bronzed skin, his large muscles taut and rippling from hard labor. “You thought that you could oppose Imhotep, the Great Pharaoh, with your puny strength...you are pathetic O’Connell, absolutely pathetic...if only your wife could see you now...” The mummy cracked his whip on the ground and moved on, as Rick gritted his teeth and tried to keep the tears from his eyes.

He had vowed to himself that he would suffer all of Imhotep’s punishments, and that this backbreaking labor would only make him stronger.

But the mummies were told by Imhotep to taunt him, to goad him, to humiliate him. They left the other slaves alone and went at him, day and night, telling him lies about Evy and Alex, explaining how Imhotep would beat him now and would beat him in every lifetime.

It took all of Rick’s self-control to bear it, to keep going. And the horrible irony of his situation came when he realized that, along with thousands of unwilling slaves, he was building Imhotep’s palace, the ultimate symbol of his power.

Rick struggled to stay alive so that when the time came, he could help his family. He had not given up completely yet–Rick was not the type to admit defeat so easily, especially to himself. But he knew, deep down, that a time might never come when he could help or save his family.

He lived every day in the rotting hell hole as a slave so that, even if he failed miserably, even if he could never defeat Imhotep and would live forever in shame, he might be able to see Evy or Alex again, once in his life, before he died.